If I'm Gilbert, where's Sullivan?
It's easy to make Jackmormon laugh. See the comments for the title.
A remark about the verse: Mrs. R and I saw a production of The Mikado recently, and I've had the tit-willow meter in my head. I used pure amphibrachs (weak strong weak) with iambic closes to even lines (as Lewis Carroll did in "The Hunting of the Snark" and elsewhere). The 8th line however is irregular - "adjacent" is an amphibrach displaced by the leading "The", and "wall" is stressed against the meter - so hopefully the line comes across as almost all stressed syllables, the tone intended to be espressed being "I'm going to say this slowly and with a lot of emphasis so you catch my drift, ok?" Beyond that one tricksy bit the whole thing's in the setup.
Mrs. R just read Connie Willis's To Say Nothing About The Dog, and the Victorian era's apparently on my mind.
A remark about the verse: Mrs. R and I saw a production of The Mikado recently, and I've had the tit-willow meter in my head. I used pure amphibrachs (weak strong weak) with iambic closes to even lines (as Lewis Carroll did in "The Hunting of the Snark" and elsewhere). The 8th line however is irregular - "adjacent" is an amphibrach displaced by the leading "The", and "wall" is stressed against the meter - so hopefully the line comes across as almost all stressed syllables, the tone intended to be espressed being "I'm going to say this slowly and with a lot of emphasis so you catch my drift, ok?" Beyond that one tricksy bit the whole thing's in the setup.
Mrs. R just read Connie Willis's To Say Nothing About The Dog, and the Victorian era's apparently on my mind.
Labels: connie willis, poems, poetry
posted by rilkefan at 22:07
4 Comments:
Are aware of the ditty or whatever on the same subject by the more senior Wainwright the III?
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(from "the BBC sessions")
I wish it was me doing it to you.
It sounds like it would be fun.
The walls in this hotel are thin.
I can hear you being done.
You sound like a nice intelligent girl,
From the way you gasp and moan.
Perhaps you went to Bennington.
Maybe your name is Joan.
(and so on)
Probably there are versions of this theme in Latin, say in Martial.
Yes, it is easy to make me laugh, but light verse will do it every time.
Yes, it is easy to make me laugh, but light verse will do it every time.
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